1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a catalyst support member for a lighter for lighting up a cigarette or the like and for a torch burner used for heating processing, for re-lighting in combustion equipment, and for other purposes.
Such a lighter or torch burner as described above has been widely used. Many of such cigarette lighters in particular have been of flame combustion type wherein a liquefied gas is vaporized and released into the atmosphere through a nozzle and is burnt when secondary air is mixed, thereby forming a flame like a candle. In some cases, the flame is blown off by wind and goes off when the lighter is used outdoors. To overcome this problem, a catalyst lighter have been proposed in which a burner method allowing primary air to be mixed is employed and a catalyst component such as platinum or the like is disposed on a top end of a combustion cylinder. In the catalyst lighter of this kind, primary air is mixed with gas, inducing internal combustion within a combustion cylinder, and one part of the mixture of primary air and gas undergoes catalytic combustion and the other part is allowed to be mixed with secondary air insides and outside of the combustion cylinder, thus forming a flame to complete a burner combustion. Even if this flame coming from the burner combustion is blown off by wind, a heated catalyst component causes re-lighting due to the previous combustion, thus making a wind-resistant lighter which will not be blown off by wind and will not go out.
Thus, the present invention relates to a catalyst support member which can be substitute for conventional platinum wire and which is cost-competitive and has a high mechanical strength to suitably support a catalyst component to be used for a lighter or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 60(1985)-101419 discloses a conventional catalyst lighter wherein a catalyst member has been disposed in the vicinity of a fire outlet to allow re-lighting automatically, when a flame is blown off, without a need of an additional procedure of re-lighting, with the use of a catalyst whose temperature has been risen up to at least an ignition temperature.
It is so constructed that a coiled shape platinum wire whose temperature has risen is allowed to come into contact with fuel gas even after a flame has been blown off in order to be re-lighted.
However, such a lighter or torch burner using a platinum wire as a catalyst is high-priced because platinum itself is expensive and the catalyst alone constitutes much of manufacturing cost, increasing the total cost of the lighter. Therefore, a cost-competitive catalyst member instead of a platinum wire is required for manufacturing of such catalyst lighters and catalyst torch burners.